Free The TV Kid by Betsy Byars Page A

better.”
    “The nurse will give you something to help you sleep now,” the doctor said. “In the morning you should be feeling some better.”
    The only thing Lennie remembered about the next morning was that he saw his leg for the first time. It scared him so much that for a moment even the pain stopped.
    His leg no longer even resembled a leg. It was a huge swollen object, shiny as glass. “Oh, no,” he moaned. From his thigh to his toes, his leg was twice as big as normal, and it was every color in the rainbow.
    Lennie fell weakly back on his pillow. “I told you not to look,” the nurse said. “Now you lie back and relax.”
    “Where’s my mom?” Lennie asked weakly.
    “She stepped out in the hall for a minute.”
    “I want my mom.” The sight of his leg had made him weak and sick and scared. He tried to rise. “Mom!”
    “She’ll be back in just a minute, soon as the doctor gets through. Your mom just felt a little dizzy and needed some air.”
    “Oh.” The nurse eased him back against his pillow. Lennie knew that the sight of his leg had been too much for his mother, too. He remembered she went out in the hall every time it was uncovered.
    “It’s beginning to look some better,” the doctor said.
    “Not to me,” Lennie moaned. “I never want to see my leg again.”
    But to everyone else the leg was a fascinating sight. That was what Lennie remembered most about the next two days—showing his leg. Nurses from other floors, doctors, patients who were allowed to walk around, visitors, all came in to have a look at Lennie’s leg.
    “Haven’t they ever seen a leg before?” he kept asking the nurse.
    “Not like that one,” she said. “You couldn’t get any more color on that leg with a paintbrush.”
    “Will it ever go away?”
    “Oh, sure.”
    “When?”
    “Oh, by next week probably.”
    “Next week?” Lennie moaned. It seemed a lifetime. Turning his head to the window, he began to weep.

Chapter Nineteen
    I t was Friday before Lennie felt like he really wanted to live. That happened about four o’clock in the afternoon. Lennie’s mom had rented a TV set for him to watch, and she had just rolled up the head of his bed so he could see. A rerun of Bonanza was on.
    And as Lennie lay there watching Hoss win a Chinese girl in a poker game, he suddenly felt hungry. The hunger surprised him for a moment. Up until now he hadn’t wanted a thing to eat. They had had to feed him through a tube in his arm.
    He said, “Mom, I’m hungry.”
    His mom was watching Hoss, smiling because Hoss had thought he was winning a horse named Ming Lee. Now he was afraid to take the girl Ming Lee back to the Ponderosa and show her to Pa. His mom turned her head to Lennie and got up at the same time. “I’ll get you something to eat,” she said quickly.
    At the door she turned, still smiling, and said, “The nurse will be so pleased. She’s been trying to get Jell-O and broth down you for days.”
    “I know, Mom, but I don’t want that stuff.”
    “What do you feel like eating then? I’ll go out for something if the doctor says you can have it.”
    “I want a hamburger.”
    “Oh, Lennie, I don’t think—”
    “And a chocolate shake.”
    “Well, I’ll try, but I really don’t—”
    “And if they won’t let me have that, then I’ll take a pizza.”
    “I’ll try, Lennie.”
    He lay back down. He already knew he wasn’t going to get the hamburger or the pizza. His mom was going to come back with Jell-O and broth, but it didn’t much matter. He felt hungry enough to eat anything.
    A commercial came on the screen. A little girl was swinging, and a solemn voice announced that the little girl had skinned her knee yesterday and was about to fall on the same knee today.
    Lennie looked at the girl’s knee. There was a mark the size of a dime. He glanced down at his own huge, discolored leg. He thought that the people who made television commercials didn’t know anything about real life, not